Ugly Duckling
by Genevieve Darcy Granger
Summary: Negan sits in his office and thinks back on his life, wondering about how exactly he became the fearsome leader of the Sanctuary and the Saviors. (Comic Spoilers and somewhat Modern and AU-ish)


Negan sat at his desk, stewing over the plans he had for the handful of communities and his various outposts, squinting at the map of Virginia. Though he had been confidently commanding the Saviors for a while now, life hadn't always been so smooth to him.

For one thing, he'd never been considered a looker until recently in his life. As a kid, he's been a happy-go-lucky. He'd play with the other kids, get just as many band-aids, scrapes, and bruises for the trouble – and he was teased unceasingly. At first it was because he was a little chubby, and then it was because he wore thick black-framed glasses. For all his happiness, even when he smiled, the other kids made fun of his teeth and dimples, too.

It was hard at first, and Negan knew intimately how kids could be cruel. If he wasn't getting in trouble for being the class clown, then he was sent home for fighting with the other kids. At a young age, he had to learn to get scrappy to be left alone.

Then came the awkwardness of adolescence when he went through puberty, growing a mustache and a patchy beard, pinching pimples in the mirror. But one thing did change for him. He'd never been an academic student and he more or less stopped being the class clown once he realized that the other kids were laughing at him rather than with him. Instead, Negan signed up for baseball – and he found his natural calling in life.

After that it was like all his other problems went away. Baseball was the only thing that kept Negan from dropping out of school. He started behaving and doing better in class so that they couldn't kick him off the team. Negan made friends on the team, and his teammates supported him so he wasn't bullied anymore. In high school, he was promised a scholarship by at least three colleges if he kept up the good work and the good grades. When they promised him that, he was only a sophomore at the time. Life was shaping up and looking good – and so was Negan.

In typical teenaged boy fashion, he had slimmed up significantly even though he snacked constantly, all thanks to his high metabolism. His facial hair grew in evenly, but he learned to shave to keep himself neat and clean looking. The acne went away, too. The only dorky thing he had left was his glasses, but he had really gone from ugly duckling to swan. And then he met Lucille.

Lucky for Negan, he hadn't grown up with Lucille otherwise he would have never had a chance with her. She transferred to his high school in their junior year, and nearly every guy in their year immediately tried to get with her. Negan couldn't blame them for it when Lucille was so damn beautiful. Her high cheekbones were sprinkled generously with freckles across her nose and curly, dirty blonde ringlets messily framed her heart-shaped face with hazel-green eyes that danced with mischief. Lucille had the kind of smile made you think she was up to something, but you couldn't be further from the truth.

The truth was that she was a sweetheart with a heart of gold, a good girl who didn't mind teasing but never did anything. Once the boys started figuring that out, they quickly gave up on the chase. Negan himself never even attempted to pursue her, not believing he'd have the chance. But that didn't matter to Lucille, because she was the one to chase Negan.

Looking back even now, he didn't know what she saw in him. He was just a typical asshole jock, chasing after that athletic scholarship with big dreams of one day being in the major leagues with the pros. It didn't matter to Lucille, though, she claimed that she saw something in him that the other boys didn't have. The first time they had make out in Lucille's car (Negan couldn't even afford his own car to take her out on dates with), Lucille pulled away and grabbed his letterman jacket in both hands. Looking deep into his eyes, her own bright eyes cutting to his core, she'd beseeched him earnestly, "You're a good man, Negan. You're beautiful. I love you."

Those words never failed to stop Negan's heart. Three simple things that he had never been told growing up from anybody, but Lucille had no problem reminding him every day. She really was too good for Negan's sorry ass.

He and Lucille became the iconic couple, the only pair of high-school sweethearts from their graduating class to get married. They didn't wait to get married either. They had their marriage in the summer between high school and college – and they'd be going to different schools after. It pissed Lucille's parents off and they immediately accused Negan of knocking up their daughter. For that, they became estranged. Negan's own father didn't give a shit about Negan, and Negan's mother had died from alcohol poisoning in his senior year. None of that mattered, though, because both Lucille and Negan firmly believed that they only needed to have each other to be happy.

When it came time to go off to their colleges, they went their separate ways excited but a little heartbroken. Negan had his baseball scholarship and was going to go the easy route academic-wise. Lucille was pushing herself through nursing school. Naturally, it was hard for them to see each other and they became wrapped up in their own lives. And Negan discovered things about himself.

For one thing, the moment he stepped foot on that college campus, he became hot shit – and it didn't even matter that he was a freshman. College girls threw themselves at his feet and even of few of Negan's teammates did, too. Negan, who had been looking forward to making new friends, went along with it all at first. At his first college party, though, he drank – something he never did before because Lucille was always there to shoot him a disappointed look. When Negan took that first sip, Lucille's voice was his conscious at the back of his mind, but by the end of his first five shots, he couldn't hear anything over the music and that dull roaring in his ears. The next morning, he woke up naked with a brunette from Alpha Gamma. When he made it back to his dorm, he debated whether he should call Lucille up and tell her what he did. But he couldn't bring himself to do it.

After that first time, it all became so much easier. Negan was the life of every party, didn't matter if it was by a sorority or a fraternity – and he never even bothered to join a fraternity. Like clockwork every Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night, Negan would play beer pong and do keg stands. Routinely the next morning he'd wake up naked with someone. He'd never been so damn popular in his life and life had never been so fun. The only drags were school assignments he couldn't be assed with and the grueling baseball practices.

That's when his grades started failing, and he started missing Lucille's calls. His A's went to B's that then dropped to C's and precariously hugged the edge of spiraling down to non-passing grades. The baseball coaches constantly chewed his ass out and gave him hell, and eventually their threats came to fruition and he was benched for the first season of baseball. Negan's scholarship hung in the balance, and he had the rug yanked out from underneath him, left wondering if he would be forced to drop out after only one year.

The entire time, Lucille never knew. Even in her first year, nursing school was intense. The distance between them was too big for them to see each other in person regularly anyway since he went to school in Georgia and her in Massachusetts. All of their interactions were limited to phone calls, and though she constantly asked how Negan was and apologized that she couldn't go see his games, Negan would lie his ass off. He told himself it was because he didn't want her to worry about him, but really, he knew it was because he didn't want her to leave him.

It was the week before finals, and rather than buckling down and studying, Negan went off partying. Usually they stuck around campus, but Negan was drunk and really wanted a burger. He hopped in the car with some chick from Tri-Delta-Whatever-the-Fuck – and the memory of rest of the night was blacked out.

Negan woke up in the hospital, his heart monitor beeping annoyingly, tubes down his throat, IVs in his arms. And Lucille had her head in her hands, crying for him. Later he learned that he had broken a collarbone – very nearly his neck. He wouldn't be able to play baseball again for a while, and since it was a DUI, he was kicked out of school as well. The girl in the car was better off, just a sprained wrist. Her car, not so much. So, not only did Lucille have to babysit her husband, but she had to come to terms that Negan had been cheating. And yet, she never left him.

It took Negan ages to recover, and even when he did, he couldn't go back to school. There was no money for it. Miraculously enough, his old high school was willing to hire him as a coach. Negan said yes because Lucille deserved a man who could provide, and her nursing school was expensive, as were his hospital bills.

Then Negan was back to being an ugly duckling, a coach getting attitude from teenagers. He was required to wear the shorts, the hat, and the sweatshirt, and he felt like a total dork doing it. But he was willing to put up with the teens and bullshit for Lucille. He owed her that much at least.

And he and Lucille were getting so much better. Negan had learned to love his job, and he even got another selling used cars. Lucille graduated from nursing school and was applying at the local hospitals. They were talking about having a baby together. Life was going to perfect and peachy-keen from here on out.

But Lucille got cancer, and Negan fell apart without her. He didn't understand how she held it together for him in the hospital, but he guessed it was because she knew he wouldn't die. Negan didn't have that luxury; Lucille was given a year at the most. It was a long, long year, and the doctors told Negan every chance they could that putting Lucille through treatment would just kill her faster, make her suffer. Lucille wasn't ready to die yet, though, so she kept fighting, and even Negan begged her to stop killing herself but Lucille wasn't going to accept it.

She endured chemo until she withered away to nothing. Her curly hair all gone, her skin whiter than paper and just as thin, bones protruding too sharply. Lucille couldn't keep any food down, it was terrible. Finally, finally, though, she died – and came back as one of those undead fucks and she could keep Negan's flesh down then but he couldn't do it. He was too much of a coward to kill her, and also too much of a coward to let her kill him like he deserved.

Coward that he was, he made his way out in the world and became responsible for so many people. He began to craft a persona, an ego of power with a bat named after Lucille, the true source of his strength, and a black leather jacket as though he were some bad boy biker rather than a widow from suburbia. And he was back from ugly, miserable, pitiful duckling to a swan with teeth that was not to be fucked with.

Pulling himself out of his thoughts, Negan reached in his desk drawer from the one surviving remnant of his ugly duckling days. It was his glasses, and since he was near sited he needed them to read or see faces up close. One of the reason why his intimidation tactic was leaning was just dumb luck. Now in the privacy of his office, though, he donned his glasses and fondly thought of his Lucille. Then he bent over the map again and ruthlessly started dividing it up. He was going to squeeze those communities for everything that they were worth for trying to fuck with him. Negan couldn't be bullied anymore.


End file.
